Teaser Tuesday: A History of Their Own

TEASER TUESDAYS is hosted by MizB at Should be Reading. The idea is to share a couple of “teaser” sentences from a random page in your current read. I’m reading A History of Their Own, Volume I, which is a comprehensive view of women in Europe from prehistory to the present time. Here’s my teaser (I had to use 3 sentences for it to make sense):

Not only did the church restrict and confine women, but the facts of their past achievements and authority were ridiculed. The woman remembered for exceptional learning, piety, and power was not Lioba, Saint Hilda, Herrad of Landsberg, or Hildegard of Bingen. Instead the fantasy of a thirteenth-century French Dominican, Steven of Bourbon, was passed on from generation to generation, the tale of the fictitious Pope Joan.